OC Register Set to Sell Santa Ana Headquarters

The Orange County Register is set to sell its Santa Ana headquarters to developer Mike Harrah, reports the Orange County Business Journal. The newspaper put the building on the market late last year, and the sale is expected to close in the coming days.

That cash on hand should be nice, as Freedom, the Reg's parent company, currently owes $4 million in severance payments to former OC Reg execs and has allegedly missed some severance payments tied to earlier staff buyouts. Reg Minister of Information Eric Morgan told the OCBJ that the missed payments were only an issue with the paper's payments processing system, however.

The greatest business achievement the Reg has made recently? Slightly overshooting their own circulation goals for the LA Register, their maligned LA imprint where they moved approximately 70 reporters, including many of their cubs and young guns. That being said, as of their June/July circulation report, they're publishing about 6,300 papers on weekdays and 17,000 on Sunday. For perspective, before I worked at the Weekly, I was the editor of a small weekly newspaper up in Seattle. My paper published 16,000 copies per week, and I was the only full-time editorial staffer.